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9Detlev Ganten

March 28, 1941 in Lüneburg

Detlev Ganten

Detlev Ganten is a German physician and pharmacologist. His scientific achievements include fundamental insights into the evolution of hormonal systems and molecular genetics, diagnostics, therapies for and the prevention of cardiovascular diseases, particularly high blood pressure. Ganten has also made very important contributions to the reorientation of the Health sciences after German reunification, as Chairman of the Helmholtz-Association of German Research Centers, as founding director of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC), as Chairman of the board of the new Charité-University Medicine Berlin, and as president of the World Health Summit.

Ganten first completed an education as an agricultural assistant in 1957. He began his medical studies in Würzburg in 1962, which he continued from 1964 in Montpellier (France) and in Tübingen starting in 1966. He completed his doctorate there in 1968 and married Dr. med. Ursula Ganten, with whom he has researched and published throughout his career. After carrying out clinical work in Tübingen and Emden, he received his license to practice medicine in 1970. Between 1969 and 1973, Ganten worked as a scientist in Montréal, Canada, and received his Philosophical Doctorate (PhD) from McGill University. Ganten returned to Germany and worked until 1991 at the Pharmacological Institute of the University of Heidelberg, which appointed him professor in 1975.

In 1991, after German reunification, Ganten was commissioned by the federal government to reorganize the central institutes of the GDR Academy of Sciences in Berlin-Buch. He became the founding director of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) and since 1993 has also been a professor at the Freie Universität Berlin, in the Chair for Clinical Pharmacology. From 1997 to 2001 he was Chairman of the Helmholtz-Association of German Research Centers. In 2004, the Senate of the City of Berlin appointed Ganten Chairman of the Board of Charité-University Medicine Berlin. During this time, Ganten merged the medical faculties in the former west (Free University) and east of Berlin (Humboldt University) to form the new Charité-University Medicine Berlin while retaining its sites in Steglitz, Wedding, Mitte and Buch. The University Medicine Act of 2005 established a new structure for medicine in Berlin and created a privileged partnership between the Charité-University Medicine Berlin and the MDC.

Detlev Ganten 2

Since his retirement in 2008, Ganten has remained active in numerous functions and offices. To mark the 300th anniversary of the Charité in 2009, he initiated the World Health Summit, an international conference on global health issues that has been held annually ever since. He remained President until 2020. In 2021 he was one of the initiators of the ”Virchow Foundation for Global Health“. Ganten lives in Berlin.

His scientific work has served as a basis for understanding and preventing high blood pressure and other cardiovascular diseases and developing new therapies to treat them. Equally important have been his services to the organization of science, the promotion of young people and initiatives on global health issues.

Anna Franziska Schwarzbach, Eisenguss, 2021